In their annual report in 1992, Amnesty International condemned Canada’s mistreatment of Indigenous peoples and wrote at length about the abuse committed against Mohawks in the Montreal region. They reported cases of Mohawk men being severely beaten at the police station in Saint-Eustache (Bonhomme 1992, A4). I bring up the Mohawk resistance struggle in and around Kanehsatà:ke and an example of the attacks against Indigenous people in Montreal after the so-called Oka Crisis to underline how racist attacks in Québec do not happen outside of history. These attacks actually illuminate how history—colonialism and slavery—is still at work. Botche Kafe actually taught in Oka from 1988 to 1991(Norris 1993), a period that overlaps with the crisis. Hence, Oka is very much a site where the ongoing history of white settler colonialism and the afterlife of slavery have been unfolding.
Scholarly articles on the case of Botche Kafe have focused on the intensive psychiatric attention that was unleashed on him, and offered great insights on how psychiatry is enmeshed with colonial and racist power in Québec and Canada (Knowles 1996; Cheboud and France 2012). Indeed, “the medical plot” that Kafe revealed and that was eventually used against him should continue to be unpacked for it illustrates one of the ways that anti-black violence, and resistance against it, is regulated through criminalization and “spirit murder” (Williams 1991, 73).* Kafe connected his abuse to the ongoing colonial arrangements of Québec society and “the afterlife of slavery” (Hartman 2007). Innocence is a foundational myth of the Québec nation, and this province continuously denies or minimizes its history of slavery.
Despite the scholarly material’s deft analysis of the relationship between psychiatry and racism, it still falls into a predictable pattern. For example, in her article critiquing the role of psychiatry in further perpetuating the violence that Kafe experienced at the hands of students and school officials, Caroline Knowles explains that “disruptive adolescents, unconcerned with the political correctness of official ‘multi-culturalism,’ could shout ‘burn the nigger,’ voicing the feelings of an adult world which dared not” (Knowles 1996, 300). There is a way in which critiques of racism in psychiatry discharge Kafe but also exonerate his many aggressors. What has Québec white society “dared not” say or do to Kafe or other Black people? Analyzing the white students’ violent actions as ‘politically incorrect’ isolated behaviour sets Kafe’s experience in Montreal apart from the history of that place. The fact is that the white students who told Kafe that he should be their slave and not their teacher are part of the same community that had white mobs organized against Mohawk activists and community members during the 1990 Oka Crisis. There was no politically correct adult world distinct from “disruptive” white youth: all were part of an unrepenting white citizenry clear about Black and Mohawk unbelonging. In the case of Kafe, white youth at high schools in Oka and Sainte-Eustache were indeed reaffirming that place as a white-settled and slave-owning land. Not reckoning with the nature of racism and anti-blackness among white citizens—whether they hold positions of power or not—is part of what turns Black speech and Black resistance into a pathology. Clearly, white children too hold power over Black people.
It is no wonder that being called a slave in his classroom precipitated a series of family memories about his great-great-grandmother’s capture by slave traders. What if Kafe’s enslaved great-great-grandmother is among those who will continue to live in the sea for millions of years?
While it would be easy to assume that Kafe’s foremother was brought to the United States, or perhaps to the Caribbean or South America, it’s entirely possible that she was in New France, especially if we consider that the majority of enslaved Black people in Québec were sold in other colonies before their arrival here. Knowing that the slave route from the Continent to Québec was winding, we can better understand that enslaved Black people during the colonial era left memories in all of those places. The same can be said of Black people in Montreal today, whether they trace their origins to the Caribbean, to Africa, or to others parts of the Americas: the memories of slavery that they carry here are neither anachronistic nor displaced. On the contrary, these memories arrive in Québec and find a place because they ‘bump into’ ghosts that remember them.
Conclusion
Botche Kafe came to Québec with a familial and national history of slavery. His experience of anti-black violence here revealed the ties that linked Québec’s history of slavery with his. He bumped into Québec’s ghosts of slavery. These ghostly encounters compel us to refuse the linear narrative of progress that imposes itself in this so-called post-racial age. The “nonevent of emancipation” allows various forms of subjugation to shape the global landscape (Hartman 1997). Like Hartman, “I believe it requires us to rethink the meaning of abolition, not only as the not-yet, not simply as the event for which we are waiting, but as the daily practice of refusal and waywardness and care in the space of captivity, enclosure, and incarceration” (2016, 214).
References
Bonhomme, J-P. 1992. “Amnesty International blâme le Canada pour le traitement réservé aux Mohawks.” La Presse, July 9.
Brand, D. 1999. At the Full and Change of the Moon. New York: Grove Press.
Buckie, C. 1993. “Death-threat suspect is denied bail; Judge rules former teacher might be danger to society.” The Gazette, June 3.
Cheboud, E., and M. Honoré France. 2012. “Counselling Black Canadians.” In Diversity, Culture and Counselling: A Canadian Perspective, edited by M. Honoré France, M. del Carmen Rodriguez, G.G. Hett., 202–216. Edmonton: Brush Education.
Dunn, K. 1990. “International observers blocked by mob; Police do little to stop attacks by white mob, members charge.” The Gazette, August 27.
Gagnon, M. 1993. “Deux-Montagnes: les commissaires invités à fermer le dossier de William Kafé.” La Presse, April 28.
Gay, D. 2004. Les Noirs du Québec, 1629–1900. Québec: Les éditions du Septentrion.
Gordon, A.F. 2008. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hartman, S. 1997. Scenes of Subjection. New York: Oxford University Press.
—. 2002. “The Time of Slavery.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 101 (4): 757–777.
—. 2007. Lose our Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
—. 2016. “The Dead Book Revisited.” History of the Present 6 (2): 208–215.
Horn, M. 1987. “Five Years of Terror.” U.S. News & World Report, October 19: 75.
Johnson, E.L. 2004. “Unforgetting Trauma: Dionne Brand’s Haunted Histories.” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 2 (1): article 4.
Knowles, C. 1996. “Racism and Psychiatry.” Transcultural Psychiatric Review 33 (3): 297–318.
Norris, A. 1993. “Ruling cheers victim of racist harassment by pupils.” The Gazette, April 17.
Picard, A. 1993. “Plagued by racist taunts, teacher awarded $10,000.” The Globe and Mail, April 14.
Ruggles, C. 1993. “Hatred in the Classroom: The William Kafe Story.” Community Contact, August 6.
—. and O. Rovinescu. 1996. Outsider Blues: A Voice from the Shadows. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
Saunders, P. 2008. “Defending the Dead, Confronting the Archive: A Conversation with M. NourbeSe Philip.” Small Axe 12 (2): 63–79.
—. 2008. “Fugitive Dreams of Diaspora: Conversations with Saidiya Hartman.” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal 6 (1): article 7.
Sharpe, C. 2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham, nc: Duke University Press.
Williams, P. 1991. The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press.
The Place That Is Supposed To Be Safe
— Angela Wright —
She pulled out a large sheet of paper and stuck it on the wall. Skin on the back of her hand rippled down to her wrist. The cane she us
ed to prop herself up when she walked was leaning against the desk.
The assignment was simple: students had to uncover their cultural heritage. She went around the room one by one, asking her eight-year-old students to declare where their families came from. One country per line, with a check mark for every repetition. England, Wales, Scotland, the countries that occupied the greatest amount of space; a common occurrence across the French immersion classrooms of the burgeoning four- and five-bedroom community. Her eyes drifted to me and I mumbled, “Greece and Bermuda.”
She backed away from the wall, still holding the marker in her hand. Turning to her students, she declared, “I am from Kanata.”
How can she be from Kanata? I wondered. That is not a country. Kanata was a sprawling suburb in the west end of Ottawa undergoing massive development. Many of the homes were still under construction so I knew she was too old to be from there.
Madame Leclerc, a stout woman with a voice that bellowed across the classroom, belonged to a group of people called the Haudenosaunee, which the French renamed the Iroquois.
They were one of the many peoples who lived in Canada—before it was Canada. She explained that in her language, “Kanata” meant village. Unlike her students, who could trace our ancestors to places outside the country’s borders, she knew only one land.
It was the first time someone explained Canada was not just a place; Canada was also a time. It was impossible to draw a start date, showing when the land began. But the beginning of Canada was clear. It was the year someone from another place decided to give the land a new name.
She was my first Indigenous teacher, and the first Indigenous person I ever met. Before her, no one said there was a difference between people who were from Canada and people who were from somewhere else. Isolated in the affluent community twenty-five kilometres east of downtown Ottawa, I learned there were two main people in Canada: those who spoke English and those who spoke French. My community was unique; it was one of the few places in Ontario with many people who spoke French.
This was the first year we had a designated class for history. Madame Leclerc chopped up the text like an editor, striving to create the most accurate and interesting story, crossing out verbs in past tense and replacing them with the present tense. Indigenous peoples, she insisted, were not people who once lived, they were people who still existed—even if we did not see them. With the assistance of inserted photocopied pages from books we had never read, she recounted a story.
It was the late nineteenth century and European settlement was soaring. The government was pushing First Nations peoples into designated territories. The government called these areas reserves, land set aside for people who lived here before Canada. Then people came, she said, and took their children to pensions. A pension was a school only for Indigenous children. A place where lessons focused on rubbing out Indigenous culture and replacing it with something British or French—something Canadian. That way, the government could turn them into ‘apples’: red on the outside, white on the inside. The children were not just taken, they were kidnapped.
Kidnapped to go to school? I thought. Weird. I wanted to ask why people with brown skin were called red. I wanted to ask why First Nations children had to be forced to go to school and why they did not have their own schools. I wanted to ask what was wrong with Indigenous culture, why it needed to be changed. But Madame Leclerc was in the middle of a lesson and was not to be interrupted.
She closed the book, loose papers still hanging out of the edges, and laid it on her desk. I started to raise my hand when she walked back to the front of the room. She pointed her index finger to the ceiling like a preacher ready to start a sermon.
Her uncle grew up in a pension. Every time he tried to speak his language, teachers pierced the sides of his tongue. She stuck out her tongue and pressed her fingers against it.
He never spoke his language again.
She looked at the floor, as if in search of something she would not find. Her grandfather had suffered a stroke. Lying on his hospital bed, he started speaking his language again. It was the first time she saw her father cry. Within the walls of a government-sanctioned institution, they had recovered something that was stolen from them.
Because of the treatment Indigenous children suffered at these pensions, Madame Leclerc said, many returned home and could not transition back into their families. Some never returned; others were ignored by their communities. They were angry at their treatment. Some began drinking alcohol to deal with their pain. When they were adults and had children of their own, many copied their school treatment at home. For the first time, she said, children in Indigenous families were beaten. Madame Leclerc described this as a pattern, a pattern of abuse.
During quiet reading time, I was hunched over an open textbook like all the other students. Madame Leclerc approached my seat. Her palm squarely on the desk, time had etched stories into the creases of her sixty-three-year-old skin. She leaned over and ran her finger under the words, “Many Indigenous children suffered at these pensions,” underlining a meaning not evident. I cocked my left eyebrow and lifted my chin towards her. Her eyes were steady, her eyebrows slightly raised. I looked down at the page; I saw only black letters arranged neatly next to each other.
—
I knocked my elbow against the wall each time my arm drifted too far from the centre of the desk. Muscles in my hand ached from gripping the pen too tightly. Once again, I had done something to annoy my grade six teacher and once again I had found myself with an in-school suspension. It had only been fifteen minutes and I was already tired of completing the worksheet. It was mandatory to fill out a worksheet answering questions about the ‘infraction’ I had committed. In this case, it was defiance: the one word whose dictionary definition I had written so many times I could quote it without looking. Each time I was sent to her, the vice-principal shoved the same worksheet in my hands and escorted me to the Alternative Learning Centre, where all ‘bad kids’ served their in-school suspensions. A student on an in-school suspension was not an active participant at school. I was confined to that room all day, including recesses and lunch hour. I did not have access to any of the teacher’s lessons from that day, so I tried to do what homework I could.
My cubicle was in the far corner of the room. The pencil markings I drew on the desk two weeks before were still there. Whenever the teacher demanded I do something without asking the same of other students and I disobeyed, she waltzed to the intercom in our classroom. She spoke loud enough for other students to hear and look up from their work, “I’m sending Miss Wright down to the office.” I placed my pencil on the desk, pushed in the chair, and began the stroll to the front of the school. Looking down at the grey tiles, waxed that morning, I focused on my steps to avoid making eye contact with teachers in the classrooms I passed; they all knew where I was going.
Grade six was a bad year; the bullying got worse. I had become accustomed to jokes about my brown skin. “You look like a piece of poo,” a red-headed girl once snapped back during an argument.
I was the only Black girl in the class, and my body became the most visible object in the room. I started puberty, and my mother bought me my first bra. My hips grew five inches, but I kept my ten-year-old waist. I had to buy pants that were a size five even though I was a size two, so there was enough space for my butt. It was my mother’s idea to fasten the sides of my pants with safety pins; the pins kept fabric in place and were not damaged by the washing machine.
My body transformed into a touchable museum exhibit, where students explored their curiosities: How many pencils could they slide into my thick curls before I noticed? Why did my hair bounce back when they tugged on it? In gym class, I clenched the muscles in my butt whenever I was standing so that when students threw basketballs at it, they would not have the satisfaction of seeing it jiggle.
The teacher, a round woman with a pudgy face, stay
ed silent. I preferred her silence to the giggles she sometimes made under her breath. I was a ‘bad kid’ and found few allies. Every time I came back from the Alternative Learning Centre, I had to reintegrate into class. Students watched as I walked to my desk and slid into the chair. Like a prisoner returning at the end of a sentence.
One day I was sick and went to the nurse’s office; my brother and I traded strep throat for almost a year until our doctor urged us to use different hand towels and toothpaste. That day, Madame Leclerc came to visit. I was in her last class before she retired and she sometimes visited her former students to say hello. My back hunched forward in the chair, a half-glass of flat ginger ale in my hand, when she walked in. She pulled up a chair, leaned back, and folded her arms. “So, how are things these days?” she said, her lips pursed as if she already knew the answer.
“Fine.”
“Oh really?” She leaned forward so her eyes were directly in front of mine. I scrunched my hands under my chin, my elbows dug into the table. I stared into the ginger ale as the last bubble fizzed. “I hear you have been getting in trouble a lot.”
I bit my bottom lip before I summoned up the courage to respond. “Yes.”
She sighed. I expected her to give me a lecture about how important it was to listen to my teachers. “I know it is not easy. But you cannot learn if you are not in class. You are too smart to waste your time in that room.” She got up from the chair and told me to keep studying hard.
I watched her walk out of the room. Barely taller than I was, her forceful demeanour garnered respect from students and teachers. A strict disciplinarian, she could silence any noisy room with a shout of a single word, “Three!” I could not understand why she was not upset.
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